Coupon Madness

Hello there,
It has been a while since I have posted. I have more bump updates, but will save that for later. Lately, I have been working on saving money on groceries and household supplies. I get extremely frustrated by how much we spend (and waste) each week at the grocery store. It seems like for two people, we should be getting by on less. Plus, since I no longer work on Fridays, I have the time to find coupons and search for bargains. And it definitely is time consuming to do! WOW. It is so completely worth it when you end up getting something for so cheap.

Example: This past week, I read on one of the blogs that I follow about at deal at Rite Aid for Huggies. When all was said and done, I had (2) Jumbo packs of huggies (about 120 diapers) and (2) tubs of wipes for $5!!!! That's a steal! I have been trying to stock up here and there on diapers where I can find them cheap.

Anyway, in my quest to become more "frugal" I have come across a lot of blogs and websites that have been helpful. Many of these blogs will actually detail out what is on sale at a particular store and then give links to printable coupons that make things either free or darn close to it!

Here are my favorites:

http://thecentsiblesawyer.blogspot.com

http://moneysavingmom.com

http://freebies4mom.blogspot.com

http://babycheapskate.com/

For the blogs, you can sign up for the email feeds and you don't have to go and check the websites daily for updates. You will simply get an occasional email with updated content from the site.

Off of these blogs, I have been linked to many other sites that do online coupons:

http://www.rather-be-shopping.com/

http://www.coolsavings.com

http://couponbar.coupons.com

http://www.couponmom.com/

www.coupons.com

http://www.retailmenot.com/
This is an interesting website for those of you who shop online. Check here first and all you do is enter the website you are thinking of ordering from, and it will provide you with any discount codes that apply for that site.

www.freeshipping.org
I haven't personally used this yet, but this site will link to many popular stores to let you know who has free shipping. Kind of cool :)

I also started to request free samples of products as the often come with great mfg. coupons and offers. The best website for this is:

www.mysavings.com
This site pulls together free sample offers from across the web and puts them in one convenient place.

My one suggestion to anyone starting to do a lot of this sort of thing is to set up a dummy email address to have this stuff sent to. Your junk email and offers will increase a LOT. I have a separate gmail account (free) that I provide for all online offers and check periodically. This way I am not annoyed by spam all the time.

The other thing I am going to do is start purchasing the weekend paper. There are a lot of available coupons in the Sunday paper that many of the blog writers reference in their posts.

I made myself a coupon book out of a small photo album and then used my label maker to label each of the pages. This is an easy way to organize coupons, see what you have and access them in the crowded grocery store!

At any rate, I hope some of this information will help others. Although it is a lot of work, it is sort of addicting to see how much you can save! Please let me know if you know of any good websites or coupon/deal sources. I would be happy to add to my list :)